Friday poem, Chase Twichell

Another from my first poetry professor, on a rainy Friday. Reading it is like breathing a sigh of relief after a long week of talking about language and how and why it is what it is. It does everything a poem is supposed to do, plainly and without apology.

Stirred Up By Rain

I fired up the mower
although it was about to rain--
a chill late September afternoon,
wild flowers re-seeding themselves
in the blue smoke of the gas-oil mix.

To be attached to things is illusion,
yet I'm attached to things.
Cold, clouds, wind, color--the sky
is what the brush-cutter wants to cut,
but again the sky is spared.

One of two things can happen:
either the noisy machine dissolves in the dusk
and the dusk takes refuge in the steady rain,
or the meadow wakes shorn of its flowers.
Believing is different than understanding.

--Chase Twichell